Director Phillip Noyce knows how to delve into the human spirit when he finds a conflict, no matter where in the world it is. Whether it’s in Vietnam with The Quiet American or Australia with Rabbit-Proof Fence or now in South Africa with the dramatic true story of Catch A Fire, this action director really knows how to tell the story. His experience with Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger gives him the expertise to make a big action thriller, but his career has edged him toward more personal stories, like this story of Patrick Chamusso, who was accused of being a terrorist during the ugly period of apartheid in the 1980s.
The actual Chamusso attended the Toronto International Film Festival along with Derek Luke, the actor who played him. Rotund, graying and excitable, the real-life character looks nothing like the smoldering handsome Luke from Antwone Fisher, but they both say they’re very much alike in spirit. Chamusso was an apolitical foreman at the Secundo oil refinery more concerned with his wife Precious (Bonnie Henna) and two daughters than the politics of the oppressive apartheid in his country. However, he is falsely accused of sabotage at the refinery and faces a brutal police colonel played by Tim Robbins.
The actors and director, as well as the real Chamusso, sat down with Hollywood.com just before their gala debut in Toronto.
Hollywood:com: What was it like when you first met each other?
Patrick Chamusso: I looked at this handsome young man coming over to me, and I thought, “Oh no, that won’t work.” But then, we kicked the soccer ball around a bit and I eventually thought it could work. We had a lot of things in common that you don’t see at first. We both have beautiful wives, for example.
Derek Luke: I came to interview him, and he ended up interviewing me. He made sure I was up to the task of understanding apartheid as an African American. I guess I’m surprised some of this was going on in 1989 and I wonder where was I?
HW: Not only must it be hard to relive some of these things, like the torture and the false accusations, but also to forgive?
PC: It was easy for us to forgive. It was easy to forgive a majority of the white people. For me, now the most important thing is the HIV orphans that I am helping with the charity group I now work for.
HW: Derek, how did you get involved with this project?
DL: It was a tough project to get greenlit, and it wasn’t assured until Tim TR: was a part of it. I remember Denzel [Washington] telling me to always focus on the work, and this is a case where I learned so much from the people I was with, the people around me. I prayed about it a lot.
HW: Did Patrick take you out on the town a lot?
DL: Actually, it was Tim [TR:] who took me out on the town, to the hottest hip-hop clubs and I’d sit down and see his white hair bouncing and jumping in the middle of the crowd.
Phillip Noyce
HW: What was your first experience with the South African situation?
Phillip Noyce I was there in 1995 and during the change to majority rule… You can’t see today how much has changed .
HW: What made you think Derek Luke could do the part?
PN: Derek, I could see very quickly, was able to play the emotional extremes. Derek had the dignity, he needed to be humble and forceful at the same time and I could see he was going to do that.
HW: What was important for you in this story?
PN: It was important to show the resilience of the black South Africans. They have no running water and electricity, what they went through and we saw first hand was a real eye opener.
Tim Robbins
HW: Your character was based on a composite of three people?
Tim Robbins: Well, yeah. He’s based on a couple of people. I don’t think that I can say because they can sue us or something, but when I first met Patrick he had a very clear idea of who I should be. It was definitely based on someone specific in his mind, and he said that when I first met him.
HW: Patrick said you weren’t mean enough at first, is that true?
TR: Well, I wasn’t going to be mean to Patrick, but I did have to
– my job with this guy is not necessarily to make him mean, but to find out how human he is. Everyone has family that they love and everyone has fear and everyone has their job to do. So I really didn’t have much of a perception of what white South Africa was all about. I have been against apartheid and I’ve gone to rallies and stuff in the ’80s about that and then in the early ’90s, but I had no idea of what the rationale for a apartheid was and what the rationale for torture I came to understand it and that didn’t make it right. It didn’t make it justifiable, but it did give me a deeper understanding of what the concept was, and there are not easy answers in this regard because they had seen other countries in Africa go Communist and they knew that the
ANC was being funded by the Soviet Union and by Cuba. It was a real threat. It was a real threat to people like [my character] Nic Vos.
HW: So if there was no one Nic Vos, who did you base it on?
TR: I based it on someone, a couple of real people. One of whom was an advisor on the film. He was a former special branch officer who had been involved in some of this nastiness and I think was kind of in a life change in a lot of ways. He was undergoing – I think that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission allowed a lot of people to start coming to terms with what they were. This particular individual not only went through that, but also went through – he goes around the world and does symposiums about torture and about oppression and oppressive states. He talks about it. He’s still in the process of recovering or figuring out what he did wrong and was still capable of saying really ignorant things. I had to hold my temper because he was my advisor and it wasn’t my job to try and change his mind about things, but it was a very interesting time that I had in South Africa.
I had to deal with some of the stuff. It’s a miracle that it exists. What Mandela did when he came back and said, “You’re forgiven if you come forward and admit what you did.” No one was going to go to jail for what they did. That’s never done after a war. That has never been done.
HW: And I hear that you actually got to meet Nelson Mandela?
TR: It was about a week before I left. I ran into this wonderfully mad that guy that owned the hotel and I was at party. He came up to me and started talking and he said, “Do you want to meet Mandela tomorrow?” I said, “Oh, I would love to.” It was my day off and I figured that he was going to take me to a rally or a big banquet with all these other people and I would give Mandela a little shakey shake and everything and it was at his house and I had lunch with him and his son-in-law. There was about four of us around the table and it was beautiful.
HW: What did you talk about?
TR: I wanted to know about where he got that idea. I wanted to talk about The Truth and Reconciliation Commission. You see the tape of that stuff and that’s the most intense drama that I can possibly imagine. It’s guys who were tortured saying to their former torturers, “Describe to everyone what you did to me.” Then the guy would start talking and they would go, “No, no, no. You’re leaving something out about what you did to my testicles. Keep telling me about that.” And by the end they’re both weeping. So I asked him that because he was talking about Gandhi because Gandhi had lived in South Africa and had been inspired to do what he did by observing apartheid. He said, “No, it wasn’t Gandhi. It was Argentina and the amnesty of the generals.”
HW: Do you think that Patrick was a terrorist? The word means something much different now, but at the time was he one?
TR: Well, they called them terrorists. If you look at the literature from the time period, the newspapers and news reports on television that was the word that they were using, but I would never equate that with what is considered a terrorist now. . . . Some of the specifics of apartheid I wasn’t aware of until I got this. It was amazing being there in Johannesburg. For example, the idea that if you were black, on the street in Johannesburg after 7 p.m. you’re in jail. There are no questions. You were going to jail. So basic human rights which is a lot different than what’s going on now.
HW: Do you think a movie like this can change people’s minds about issues?
TR:: I’m not sure if film can do that. I think that film can
inspire thought and can raise questions and that’s the first step in
change, I suppose. Sister Helen [Prejean], the woman who wrote Dead
Man Walking, she believes that emotion can change people, that if you
touch someone’s emotions you can change someone. Both of them are
legitimate though. I like a big entertainment movie. I like a movie
like this. I do both of them and I’m happy to do both of them. Neither
one is more important than the other although I have to say that I have
gotten long rides about of scripts that have touched people.
HW: Where do you see the direction of our country going
TR: Well, I’m concerned. I find it interesting that there seems to be more fear where there is less information. You go to places that have a choice of information, larger cities, I guess what you would call Blue States, in a way, but for some reason, I don’t know why – for example, New York City and Washington, the two places that were attacked both voted for [John] Kerry and very strongly at that, overwhelmingly. I’m concerned that there are some pretty manipulative people that are trying to inspire fear in people in order to stay powerful. That’s not healthy for the country.
HW: What was good about working with Phillip Noyce?
TR: He’s great. He’s a big man and a really open heart and a really talented director. It’s a tough subject matter and it was tough conditions that we were working in and he was always very positive and very inspiring to work with.
